Wednesday, December 17, 2014

In Blindness—
the 1995 novel by the Portuguese (1998) Nobel laureate for literature Jose
Saramago— an epidemic of “white blindness” mysteriously renders all people,
save one, blind, and chaos and cruelty ensue. Written without much punctuation
the reader must, much like a therapist trying to make sense of the patient’s
narrative, discern who is speaking to whom and about what. Blindness teems with allusions to our metaphorical blindness, such
as people “behave as if they were afraid of getting to know each other.” Saramago speaks to the sanctity of
reciprocity: “I have no right to look if the others cannot see me,” and to the
wrath – “some will hate you for seeing” –
of being the one who sees what all others are blind to (or disavow, like
a parent who attacks the seeing child’s reality). There are moments of
tenderness, such as when two blind lovers reunite: “how did they recognize each
other…love, which people say is blind, also has a voice of its own,” and
moments of despair when one’s true self goes unrecognized: “what good would it
do her beautiful bright eyes…if there is no one to see them.”

Because all, save one, are blind, there can
be no witness, yet some manage to find affective sharing when the blight can
“convert strangers into companions in misfortune.” Despair overtakes many in
this dark novel for “what meaning do tears have when the world has lost all
meaning.” Even the one who is spared this affliction is incredulous to what
becomes of those around her: “what shocked her was her disappointment, she had
unwittingly believed that…her neighbors would be blind in their eyes, but not
in their understanding.”

If blindness is, in part, the blindness to the need of
the other, then I am reminded of Stuart Pizer’s 2014 paper The Analyst’s Generous Involvement: Recognition and the “Tension of
Tenderness” which eloquently joins with and departs from Emmanuel Levinas’
idea of putting the suffering other above oneself. If one is to lean towards
another’s need, one must first see (recognize) the need. Pizer takes Sullivan’s
concept of the ‘tension of tenderness’: “the analyst’s recognition of a need or
an affect state in the patient evokes an internal tug constituting the analyst’s
need to provide for what has been recognized.” He writes, “An instinctual tug toward
tenderness, or a spirit of generosity, in response to a recognized state of need
in the Other is an inherent feature of our functioning attachment system.”

But
how does a blind person see the Levinasian strange, transcendent, unfathomable ‘face’
of the other? Pizer sees generosity as instinctual, but expects Levinas to “reject
instinct in favor of a subjectivity open to interruption, surrender, and
awakening by an encounter with the Other.” Pizer continues, [we are] “wired to
seek community, relational embeddedness, or ‘we-ness.’” Generosity sometimes
requires of the analyst, per Corpt, an “unsettling re-evaluation and openness
to amending any and all aspects of analytic practice in light of the patient’s
forward edge strivings.” Pizer learned from his grandfather the healing power of
the affectively resonant, witnessing presence of someone who recognized his
need, and accepted him just as he was. Saramago notes its opposite, “Blindness
is also this, to live in a world where all hope is gone.” That is, no hope of
being seen, recognized, contained and accepted.

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

The task of the analyst is to help the patient learn
about himself (discover the many facets of himself, if you will), not to impose on the patient the necessity to
prove the analyst’s pre-learned theories about human behavior. The analyst,
then, has no corner on ‘truth’ and cannot privilege her perspective over that
of the patient’s psychic reality. Instead, both analyst and patient struggle to
negotiate a working relationship toward discovery. Faltering, fumbling, rupturing,
both then strive to upright and repair what has been lost in the relationship. No
matter how both analyst and analysand are implicated in the co-creation of the transference,
countertransference, or resistance, whatever the patient does is always in the
service of trying to heal himself. The patient tests the analyst for trustworthiness,
commitment, and circumspection. Make no mistake, that whatever the outcome—whether
impasse, acquiescence, failure to improve, getting worse, or stopping treatment
– it is always the analyst’s responsibility. The analyst welcomes in, then must contain what has been welcomed.
The analyst’s failure to monitor interactions between patient and analyst, to
recognize and correct misattunements, can have dire consequences. While both
take responsibility for the discourse, any failure lies on the shoulders of the
analyst alone.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Because we all seek to maintain [or create anew] a sense
of individual meaning, Lafarge writes that disruption of our sense of self can
lead to the wish for revenge, “a
ubiquitous response to narcissistic injury.” Revenge “serves to represent and
manage rage and to restore the disrupted sense of self [and restore the]
internalized imaging audience [the other].” Narcissistic injury is a disruption
to meaning and self value and to the story of one’s experience. In
efforts to reestablish meaning and to construct a story, as well as create a
witness to one’s story, the avenger uses anger and revenge to consolidate early
experiences (a time when the “imagining parent” [like Bion] helped construct the
infant’s mind with meaning and with its representations of self and others).
Communicating experience and constructing its story is also present in the
revenge. It is a way of being seen and heard and helps maintain the tie to the lost,
imagining parent. Thus, revenge can ward off object loss [Searles] and hatred
can be an early form of object constancy. “Giving up the wish for revenge
requires the avenger to recognize the rage and helplessness that are warded off…[and]
involves acknowledgement of a transient disruption of self experience” that they
accompany.

Lansky tells us that shame gives rise to rage as a strategy to protect one’s sense of self from the awareness of helplessness, abandonment, betrayal. Sometimes, clinically, it is easier to analyze the visible
rage and resentment than its underlying shame, but it is the detailed
exploration of shame that sheds light on its unbearableness. When one’s sense of self
is chronically disrupted from the betrayal by needed and beloved others,
attachment is at risk. All future attachment is at risk, for who wants to be
duped again, subject to humiliation and shame? The disrupted self, in valiant
efforts to reconstitute a self representation that can be lived with, may need
to withdraw and isolate, project, omnipotently control, split, or retaliate.
The latter, as revenge, can seemingly restore a sense of power and
effectiveness as well as protect against awareness of vulnerability. Revenge also
protects against the uncertainty of forgiveness. Only awareness of loss and its
mourning can circumvent the need to humiliate the other, leading to forgiveness
both of self and other.

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Welcome to "Contemporary Psychoanalytic Musings," the blog of the Tampa Bay Institute for Psychoanalytic Studiesor, as it is conveniently known, T-BIPS. We invite you to post your comments on psychoanalysis and books, film, conferences, the media, art, theory, clinical situations, current controversies, social issues, and anything else as seen through a psychoanalytic lens. We look forward to a spirited dialogue with you.Lycia Alexander-Guerra, M.D.TBIPS PresidentGabcast! Welcome! #3

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In 2005 a group of psychoanalysts & psychoanalytic psychotherapists convened to explore possibilities for meeting the educational needs of clinical professionals in the Tampa Bay area. Out of those discussions evolved a new institute, the Tampa Bay Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies. Consistent with the spirit of collegiality, openness, and diversity that inspired its development, the new Institute is non-authoritarian and democratic. Training programs utilize progressive and classical concepts which have been endorsed by contemporary critiques of psychoanalytic education. Believing that the capacity to think psychoanalytically best develops in an atmosphere of inquiry, open dialogue, and active participation the founding members sought to integrate these values into the structure of the new Institute and into the process of training. A precedent of collaboration and mutual respect for the contributions of all faculty and candidates was established enabling our mission to gain immediate representation in our actions.